Stacy writes:
Hi Vincent and all!
It’s 13 degrees Celsius/56 Fahrenheit here in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
I am a stay-at-home mom with a background in art and I have been listening to the TWIV podcast for many years, usually while I prepare dinner.
Recently, the Economist magazine published a graph showing the percentage of measles vaccinations across the world from 1980 to 2013. It is pretty disheartening, but worth checking out:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/03/daily-chart-16
I am writing you about this, because I am currently enrolled in a Coursera database class and our assignment is to imitate what The Economist does so well with its “Graphic Detail” blog — That is, analyse a data source and create a visualization of the data to highlight something of importance.
I have been extracting links from microbe.tv/twiv using code provided to us by the professor (thank you Dr. Chuck!) and having a lot of fun, but I was wondering if your team or other listeners might be able to direct me to any data sources I might use for this assignment. I am as much a noob at programming as I am with virology, but my interest in both just keeps increasing and it would be great to merge them.
Thanks for keeping my brain happy while chopping many, many onions,
Stacy
Will writes:
Dear TWIV-ers:
It is currently overcast, 16C, and 74% humidity here in San Francisco. I’m not sure if you’ve talked about this on the show yet, but it might be relevant for many listeners. The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) is changing the number of times that students are eligible to apply for funding (announcement linked HERE). Previously, students were eligible to apply three times: as a senior undergraduate, as a first year graduate student, and as a second year graduate student. With the new system, students are now limited to two attempts: Once as a senior undergraduate, and then once as a first year grad student OR once as a second year grad student (but not both). According to the NSF this change “…Should result in more individuals applying as undergraduate students who have not yet made the commitment to go to graduate school. This is a more diverse population than admitted graduate students.”
How do you think this will impact graduate student funding or diversity? For Vincent and Kathy specifically: what advice will you give your students on when to apply?
Thank you so much for all of your answer and all your great work!
Best:
Will
PS: I started listening to TWIV because of Professor James Champoux at the University of Washington through an assignment to review an episode (I picked TWIV 254), and now I listen in graduate school!
—
Will Lykins
UC Berkeley-UCSF Graduate Program in Bioengineering
Melissa writes:
Love twiv!! Thank you for doing these podcasts.
I was wondering if an episode on the virus causing starfish wasting disease is in the works? It would be interesting to learn about this.
Thanks!
Dirk writes:
Hey “difficult-to-always-greet-in-a-unique-and-funny-way”- friends,
A paper on antivirals. From a pharma company, that challenges patients with strange drug-pricing (remember sofosbuvir), but that also makes important progress in the field. This paper describes the most broad-spectrum direct antiviral at the moment. Can we finally match with the antibiotics?
Sound science, from drug to pro-drug, PK, biochemical assays, animal models … a lot to learn.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v531/n7594/full/nature17180.html
Thanks for the fine content and excellent sound quality!
Regards,
Dirk
Thomas writes:
Hello TWIV!
Longtime listener, and still working through the archives, so apologies if this has been covered previously.
I had a question about the potential effects of changes in US organ transplant regulations on the evolution of HIV.
Is it possible that these changes could facilitate faster evolution of HIV, even at a small scale, since different viral strains might be introduced to the same host, and could recombine on coinfection of the same cells?
Also, would any of the usual cocktail of immune-modifying drugs given during transplantation alter the virus’s chances?
I’m sure there’s some technical reason I’m missing that might prohibit this from happening, but I can’t help but think of a parallel to those accidentally complimentary chicken vaccines from a few years ago.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/07/chicken-vaccines-combine-produce-deadly-virus
Not sure how to quantify that risk, if there even is a viable mechanism, in order to weigh it against the value of healthy lifespan added, but I can’t find a great reason to quickly rule out the possibility.
Looking forward to your thoughts on this.
Thank you for your time, and keep up the great work
Jeffrey writes:
Hey TWiV crew,
There might be a slight chauvinistic bias here, but this paper came out recently from McGill University, where the temperature has definitely warmed up from last week. CRISPR is an incredible discovery, but is not yet a molecular panacea. Perhaps it’s unsurprising that HIV can develop resistance so rapidly, but does seem interesting that it derives not from errors in reverse transcription but from the CRISPR/Cas9 machinery itself.
The paper itself.
Here are the two URL’s as well:
Nature: http://www.nature.com/news/hiv-overcomes-crispr-gene-editing-attack-1.19712
Cell Reports: http://www.cell.com/cell-reports/abstract/S2211-1247%2816%2930298-4
All the best from Montreal,
Jeffrey L.
Chris writes:
Hi TWiV Team,
In TWiV #384, you discussed the success of vaccines and our understanding of the correlates of protection. Many very successful vaccines have been developed by merely introducing attenuated pathogens into people – but the reason for their success has not been so much due to our understanding of the immune response and the correlates of protection. It is more due to the fact that in those particular infections, exposure to the fully-virulent wild-type pathogen results in most cases at least, in an acute disease and then the immune system is able to eradicate the pathogen and protect the person from subsequent re-infection. Many of the difficulties we face in the development of vaccines to other, more challenging diseases are related to the fact that when we are infected with those particular pathogens, the immune system is incapable of eradicating the pathogen and / or is incapable of preventing re-infection. I believe one of our greatest challenges is developing a vaccine to protect against (or indeed to help treat) HIV infection because our immune systems are unable to eradicate the infection. Furthermore, the cells that are central in controlling the immune response…T cells, are very effectively destroyed by HIV. An effective HIV vaccine will need to stimulate a different, much more effective response than the one that is stimulated by natural infection…which is transient and ultimately ineffective. This is a huge challenge….but I believe that because of the massive unmet medical need, we should never give up hope of developing a vaccine to prevent HIV infection.
Thanks and please keep up the good work with TWiV !
Chris.
_________________________________________________________________________
Christopher Ring MSc PhD FIBMS FHEA
Senior Lecturer in Microbiology.
Department of Natural Sciences,
School of Science & Technology,
Middlesex University,
The Burroughs,
Hendon,
London.
Robert writes:
Dear Twivlords (esp. Dr. Condit),
Your pick of “Dune” this week prompts me to comment. In science fiction I feel my expertise to be seriously extensive, albeit dated. “Dune” is awesome and the movie (which was started six times before being released) not that bad, but, while the premier ecology and geo-engineering novel (implicitly based on the Israeli experience of that time, was not “the best”. My personal favorite is “Mindswap”, but a strong argument is to be made for “Stranger in a Strange Land”. I argue that the novel of ideas resides largely in science fiction in the US.
Thank you all for sharing your expertise and enthusiasm.
bob hedlund, bioinformatics student, USF
Raymond writes:
Dear Dr. Racaniello:
Your guest (Dr. Stuart Firestein) on podcast 385 made reference to a publication entitled “500 discoveries that came about by curiosity driven research” by a Donald Brevin?
I’ve tried to find this item on Amazon and with a Google search but with no satisfactory results. Could you possibly provide a link to this item on the TWiV 385 web page or provide an ISBN-13 number.
I have been a regular listener to the TWiV & TWiM podcasts via the Science 360 Radio network. Although I have no background in biological science, I have enough recall of my Grade 13 biology course that I am able to ‘keep up’ with the topics under discussion.
The ‘This week in ’ podcasts provide a very accessible source of information to developments in the field of biological science and does a great deal to raise my personal level of scientific literacy.
Keep up the good work!
Sincerely yours,
Raymond Aiken
Cushendall
Northern Ireland, UK
Lloyd writes:
Vincent,
I love your programs and always LEARN SOMETHING when listening. Today, I caught part of a book title that was something to the effect of “500 things we have learned from things that have failed”. Since I was driving, I couldn’t write down the author or exact book title, so could you please tell me again what this book was and who wrote it?
I am a professional horticulturist. One of the early botanist who explored the SE US in the late 1700’s was William Bartram. He visited many of the Creek Indian towns in Alabama and one of the Creek chiefs was amused that he was looking for flowers, so he called him “Puc Puggy” which is Creek for “Flower Hunter”. Thought it was a good handle for a horticulturist so I used it!
Best wishes,
Doug
Athens, AL
(Lloyd is my first name)
Simon writes:
Hello ConTWiVstadors!
I watched a youtube lecture (NIHvcast) by Skip Virgin about how the virome interacts with humans and with gut microbiomes. Something he said brought a question to mind. He said, I think, that the virome of a person is in some kind of equilibrium with the environment and that the influx you get from touching door knobs and getting coughed in the face means that new viruses are introduced constantly. I would therefore like to hear you guys speculate as to what would happen to the virome of an astronaut in the ISS who does not have this constant influx of new viruses. Or perhaps to a smaller degree sailors in nuclear submarines. Or just really lonely people. Or bioinformaticians.
I realize that this is a very open question and you may do with it as you like; I just thought it was an interesting idea to study. If somebody from NASA is listening to this and would like to give me access to their astronauts just give me a holler!
Kind regards,
Simon
Ps. The weather here in Kiruna, 750 miles north of Stockholm, is as you would expect quite cold. I always snicker a little when Alan describes the weather in Western Massachusetts as cold. If you think that’s cold I would like to invite you to visit Kiruna! Oh well, time to ride to work on my polar bear. Ciao!
Anthony writes:
I’m trying to find the Youtube, but my memory is that Francis Crick later claimed that “Central Dogma” was a poor choice of words. He didn’t mean that he was proudly revealing a profound truth. Instead, he humbly was admitting that the evidence that he was presenting was not absolutely conclusive and so he was asking the reader to take some things on faith.
FWIW
Marion writes:
About 37 minutes, you read a letter. From the subsequent conversation, I take it that none of the TWIV group is familiar with the current Skeptic movement, perhaps best embodied by “Skeptics Guide To The Universe” podcast http://www.theskepticsguide.org/, which I would offer as a listener pick of the week. BTW, their major conference is occurring as you podcast on Friday in NY, NECSS http://necss.org/, which I hope to attend for the first time this year and which I guess would be my second pick if I had ever attended it. I understand it gets rave reviews. I would characterize contemporary use of the word Skeptic as a rational approach to life and living, not as “not believing anything.” It is very pro-science. It is also being shaped by what it is against: namely it is against “woo,” pseudo-science and anti-vaxxers. Other than that, it is (at least in theory) NOT ideological. It is also separate from atheist or humanist movements.
Marion Freistadt, PhD, MBA 504-352-2142
Virology Institute of New Orleans
https://marion-freistadt.squarespace.com/
http://virologyinstituteofneworleans.org/index.html
Jennie writes:
Dear TWiVome,
Here is a short video about the conservation and study of the leatherback sea turtle in Costa Rica, including an awesome rap song at the end (about turtles!).
Enjoy!
Jennie